Online and over-the-top (OTT) media delivery provides content providers more direct means to reach users or viewers than traditional media broadcasting. With online and OTT delivery, content providers can customize content and advertisements presented with the content for different users, which in turn, allows content providers to better monetize their content.
In the traditional broadcast model, advertising campaigns were defined with timed slots at which the advertisement was to air in exchange for certain pricing, wherein the pricing was based on the expected viewership at each time slot. The campaign would be complete after airing the advertisement at the time slots regardless of the actual viewership. With online and online and OTT delivery, advertising campaigns can now be defined more granularly and can be customized dynamically.
On-demand playback of the online or OTT delivered content has also created additional opportunities for content monetization. Viewers are no longer relegated to the distributor airing schedule. With on-demand playback, viewers can view content when and where they want. Thus, each subsequent on-demand playback is an opportunity to obtain additional advertisement impressions in order to complete an existing advertising campaign or to commence a new one.
However, in some cases, the on-demand content is a recording or copy of the original content. The on-demand content includes the same advertisements that were presented with the original presentation of the content. For the monetization reasons discussed above, there is a need to replace advertisements in the on-demand content, but to do so in a controlled manner. In particular, there is a need to replace advertisements for certain users while retaining the original advertisements for other users. There is a need to replace advertisements that have received a specified number of impressions in satisfaction of the corresponding advertising campaigns. There is also a need to replace advertisements that become stale or obsolete after a certain passage of time from when the content was first presented. For example, advertisements may be used to promote upcoming content or provide notification of upcoming events. In such cases, the advertiser may want as many impressions up to a certain point in time after which the advertisements have no value.
In other words, there is a need to retain the original form of the media content for some time and control the partial content (e.g., advertisement) replacement such that the replacement does not occur randomly or dynamically with each playback. More specifically, there is a need to control the partial content replacement to account for certain timing or campaign criteria. There is a need to embed or incorporate the criteria with the on-demand content and trigger the partial content replacement once the timing or campaign criteria has been satisfied.